by Jim Butcher
“Well, you know how much I love getting called in the middle of the night to drive through snow and ice to play chauffeur for grumpy low-life investigators. The anticipation slowed me down.”
I grunted in what might have been construed as an apologetic manner by someone who knew me.
Thomas did. “What’s up?”
I told him everything.
Thomas is my half brother, my only family. I’m allowed.
He listened.
“And then,” I concluded, “I went for a ride in a monster truck.”
Thomas’s mouth twitched up in a quick smile. “It is kinda butch, isn’t it.”
I squinted around the truck. “Do TV shows start an hour later in the backseat than they do up here?”
“Who cares?” Thomas said. “It’s got TiVo.”
“Good,” I said. “It might be a little while before I return you to your regularly scheduled programming.”
Thomas let out a theatrical sigh. “Why me?”
“Because if I want to find Marcone, the best place to start is with his people. If word gets out that he’s gone missing, there’s no telling how some of them might react when I come snooping around. So you’ve got my back.”
“What if I don’t want your back?”
“Cope,” I said heartlessly. “You’re family.”
“You’ve got me there,” he admitted. “But I wonder if you’ve thought this through very thoroughly.”
“I try to make thinking an ongoing process.”
Thomas shook his head. “Look, you know I don’t try to tell you your business.”
“Except tonight, apparently,” I said.
“Marcone is a grown-up,” Thomas said. “He signed on to the Accords willingly. He knew what he was going to be letting himself in for.”
“And?” I said.
“And it’s a jungle out there,” Thomas said. He squinted through the thick snow. “Metaphorically speaking.”
I grunted. “He made his bed, and I should let him lie in it?”
“Something like that,” Thomas said. “And don’t forget that Murphy and the police aren’t going to be thrilled with a ‘Save the Kingpin’ campaign.”
“I know,” I said, “and I’d love to stand back and see what happens. But this isn’t about Marcone anymore.”
“Then what is it about?”
“Mab skinning me alive if I don’t give her what she wants.”
“Come on, Harry,” Thomas said. “You can’t really think that Mab’s motives and plans are that direct, that cut-and-dried.” He adjusted the setting of the Hummer’s wipers. “She wants Marcone for a reason. You might not be doing him any favors by saving him on Mab’s behalf.”
I scowled out at the night.
He held up a hand, ticking off fingers. “And that’s assuming that, one, he’s alive at all right now. Two, that you can find him. Three, that you can get him out alive. And four, that the opposition doesn’t cripple or kill you.”
“What’s your point?” I asked.
“That you’re playing against a stacked deck, and that you have no idea if Mab is going to be there to cover your bets when the bad guys call.” He shook his head. “It would be smarter for you to skip town. Go someplace warm for a few weeks.”
“Mab might take that kinda personal,” I said.
“Mab’s a businesswoman,” Thomas said. “Creepy and weird, but she’s cold, too. Calculating. As long as you still represent a potential recruit to her, I doubt she’d elect to depreciate your value prematurely.”
“Depreciate. I like that. You might be right—unless, to return to the original metaphor, Mab isn’t playing with a full deck. Which the evidence of recent years seems to imply with increasing frequency.” I nodded out the window. “And I’ve got a feeling that I’d have had even more trouble with the gruffs I’ve seen so far if we weren’t in the middle of a freaking blizzard. If I waltz off to Miami or somewhere warm, I’ll be putting myself that much nearer to the agents of Summer—who are also planning my murder.”
Thomas frowned and said nothing.
“I could run, but I couldn’t hide,” I said. “Better to face it here, on my home ground, while I’m still relatively rested”—I let out a huge and genuine yawn—“instead of waiting for faerie goons from one Court or the other to, ah, depreciate me by surprise after I’ve been on the run for a few weeks.”
“What about the Council?” Thomas demanded. “You’ve been wearing the grey cloak for how long, now? And you’ve fought for them how many times?”
I shook my head. “Right now the Council is still stretched to the limit. We might not be in open battle with the Red Court at the moment, but the Council and the Wardens have got years of catch-up work to do.” I felt my jaw tighten. “Lot of warlocks have come up in the past few years. The Wardens are working overtime to get them under control.”
“You mean kill them,” Thomas said.
“I mean kill them. Most of them teenagers, man.” I shook my head. “Luccio knows my feelings on the matter. She refuses to assign any of it to me. Which means that other Wardens are forced to pick up the slack. I’m not going to add to their workload by dragging them into this mess.”
“You don’t seem to mind adding to mine,” Thomas noted.
I snorted. “That’s because I respect them.”
“So long as we have that clear,” he said.
We drove past a city snowplow. It had foundered in a deep drift, like some kind of metallic Ice Age beast trapped in a tar pit. I watched it with bemusement as Thomas’s truck crunched slowly, steadily on by.
“By the way,” he asked, “where do you want to go?”
“First things first,” I said. “I need food.”
“You need sleep.”
“Tick-tock. Food will do for now.” I pointed. “There, an IHOP.”
He hauled the big truck into a slow, steady turn. “Then what?”
“I ask people impertinent questions,” I said. “Hopefully turning up pertinent answers.”
“Assuming someone doesn’t kill you while you do.”
“That’s why I’m bringing my very own vampire bodyguard.”
Thomas parked across three spaces in the tiny, otherwise unoccupied lot of an International House of Pancakes.
“I like the scarf,” I said. I leaned over and inhaled through my nose as best I could. It stung, but I detected a faint whiff of vanilla and strawberries. “She make it for you?”
Thomas nodded without saying anything. The leather-gloved fingers of one hand traced over the soft, simple yarn. He looked quietly sad. I felt bad for mentioning Justine, my brother’s lost lover. Then I understood why he wore the gloves: If she’d made it for him, a token of her love, he didn’t dare touch it with his skin. It would sear him like a hot skillet. So he kept it close enough for him to smell her touch upon it, but he didn’t dare let it brush against him.
Every time I think my romantic life is a wasteland, I look at my brother and see how much worse it could be.
Thomas shook his head and killed the engine and we sat for a moment in silence.
So I clearly heard a deep male voice outside the truck say, “Don’t either of you move.” There was the distinct click-clack of a shotgun’s pump working. “Or I will kill you.”
Chapter Nine
When there’s a gun pointed at you, you’ve got two options: Either you move, fast and unexpectedly, and hope that you get lucky, or you freeze and try to talk your way clear. Given that I had really limited room in which to attempt to dodge or run, I went with option B: I held still.
“I don’t suppose,” I asked hopefully, “that this is the full military model?”
“It has individually heated seats and a six-disk CD changer,” Thomas said.
I scowled. “Uh-huh. Those are way cooler than silly features like armor and bulletproof glass.”
“Hey,” Thomas said, “it’s not my fault you have special needs.”
“Harry,” said
the man with the shotgun, “hold up your right hand, please.”
I arched an eyebrow at that. Typically the vocabulary of thugs holding guns to your head ran a little light on courtesy phrases like please.
“You want me to kill him?” Thomas murmured, barely audible.
I twitched my head in a tiny negative motion. Then I lifted up my right hand, fingers spread.
“Turn it around,” said the man outside. “Let me see the inside of your wrist.”
I did.
“Oh, thank God,” breathed the voice.
I’d finally placed it. I turned my head to one side and said through the glass, “Hey, there, Fix. Is that a shotgun you’re holding to my head, or are you just glad to see me?”
Fix was a young, slender man of medium height. His hair was silver-white and very fine, and though no one would ever accuse him of beauty, there was a confidence and surety in his plain features that gave them a certain appeal. He was a far cry from the nervous, scrawny kid I’d first met several years ago.
He wore jeans and a green silk shirt—nothing more. He obviously should have been freezing, and he just as obviously wasn’t. The thickly falling snowflakes weren’t striking him. Every single one seemed to find its way to the ground around him somehow. He held a pump-action shotgun with a long barrel against his shoulder, and wore a sword on a belt at his hip.
“Harry,” he said, his voice steady. His tone wasn’t hostile. “Can we have a polite talk?”
“We probably could have,” I said, “if you hadn’t started off by pointing a gun at my head.”
“A necessary precaution,” he said. “I needed to be sure you hadn’t taken Mab’s offer.”
“And become the new Winter Knight?” I asked. “You could have asked me, Fix.”
“If you’d become Mab’s creature,” Fix said, “you would have lied. It would have changed you. Made you an extension of her will. I couldn’t trust you.”
“You’re the Summer Knight,” I replied. “So I can’t help but wonder if that wouldn’t make you just as controlled and untrustworthy. Summer’s not all that happy with me right now, apparently. Maybe you’re just an extension of Summer’s will.”
Fix stared at me down the barrel of the shotgun. Then he lowered it abruptly and said, “Touché.”
Thomas produced from nowhere a semiautomatic pistol scaled to fit his truck, and had it trained on Fix’s head before the other man had finished speaking the second syllable of the word.
Fix’s eyes widened. “Holy crap.”
I sighed and took the gun gently from Thomas’s grip. “Now, now. Let’s not give him the wrong idea about the nature of this conversation.”
Fix let out a slow breath. “Thank you, Harry. I—”
I pointed the gun at Fix’s head, and he froze with his mouth partly open.
“Lose the shotgun,” I told him. I made no effort to sound friendly.
His mouth closed and his lips pressed into a thin line, but he obeyed.
“Step back,” I said.
He did it.
I got out of the car, carefully keeping the gun trained on his head. I recovered the shotgun and passed it back to Thomas. Then I faced the silver-haired Summer Knight in dead silence while the snow fell.
“Fix,” I said quietly, after a moment had passed. “I know you’ve been spending a lot of time in the supernatural circles lately. I know that plain old things like guns don’t seem like a significant threat, in some ways. I know that you probably meant it as a message, that you weren’t coming after me with everything you could bring to bear, and that I was supposed to consider it a token of moderation.” I squinted down the sight of Thomas’s gun. “But you crossed a line. You pointed a gun at my head. Friends don’t do that.”
More silence and snowfall.
“Point another weapon at me,” I said quietly, “and you’d damned well better pull the trigger. Do you understand me?”
Fix’s eyes narrowed. He nodded once.
I let him look down the gun’s barrel for a few more seconds and then lowered it. “It’s cold,” I said. “What do you want?”
“I came here to warn you, Harry,” Fix said. “I know Mab has chosen you to act as her Emissary. You don’t know what you’re getting into. I came to tell you to stand clear of it.”
“Or what?”
“Or you’re going to get hurt,” Fix said quietly. He sounded tired. “Maybe killed. And there’s going to be collateral damage along the way.” He held up a hand and continued, hurriedly, “Please understand. I’m not threatening you, Harry. I’m just telling you about consequences.”
“I’d have an easier time believing that if you hadn’t opened the conversation by threatening to kill me,” I said.
“The last Summer Knight was murdered by his Winter counterpart,” Fix replied. “In fact, that’s how most of them die. If you’d taken service with Mab, I wouldn’t stand a chance in a fair fight against you, and we both know it. I did what I had to in order to warn you and still protect myself.”
“Oh,” I said. “It was a precautionary shotgun aimed at my skull. That makes it different.”
“Dammit, Dresden,” Fix said. “What do I have to do to get you to listen to me?”
“Behave in a vaguely trustworthy fashion,” I said. “For instance, next time you know that Summer’s hitters are about to make a run at me, maybe you could call me on a telephone and give me a little heads-up.”
Fix grimaced. His face twisted into an expression of effort. When he spoke his jaws stayed locked together, but I could, with difficulty, understand the words. “Wanted to.”
“Oh,” I said. A big chunk of my anger evaporated. It was probably just as well. Fix wasn’t the one who deserved to be on the receiving end of it. “I can’t back off.”
He drew in a breath and nodded as if in comprehension. “Mab’s got a handle on you.”
“For now.”
He gave me a rather bleak smile. “She isn’t the sort to let go of anyone she wants to keep.”
“And I’m not the sort who gets kept,” I replied.
“Maybe not,” Fix said, but he sounded dubious. “Are you sure you won’t reconsider?”
“We’re going to have to agree to disagree.”
“Jesus,” Fix said, looking away. “I don’t want to square off against you, Dresden.”
“Then don’t.”
He stared quietly at me, his expression serious. “I can’t back off, either. I like you, Harry. But I can’t make you any promises.”
“We’re playing for opposite teams,” I said. “Nothing personal. But we’ll do what we have to do.”
Fix nodded.
We didn’t speak for almost a minute.
Then I laid the shotgun down in the snow, nodded, and got back into Thomas’s truck. I gave the huge automatic back to my brother. Fix made no move toward the shotgun.
“Harry,” he said, as the truck started to pull out. His mouth twitched a few times before he blurted, “Remember the leaf Lily gave you.”
I frowned at him, but nodded.
Thomas got the truck moving again and started driving. Windshield wipers squeaked. Snow crunched beneath tires, a steady white noise.
“Okay,” Thomas said. “What was that all about? Guy’s supposed to be a friend, and he screwed you over. I thought you were going to pistol-whip him for a minute. Then you start getting all teary-eyed.”
“Metaphorically speaking,” I said tiredly.
“You know what I mean.”
“He’s under a geas, Thomas.”
Thomas frowned. “Lily’s got him in a brain-lock?”
“I doubt she’d do that to Fix. They go back.”
“Who, then?”
“My money is on Titania, the Summer Queen. If she told him to keep his mouth shut and not to help me, he wouldn’t get a choice in the matter. Probably why he showed up armed and tried to intimidate me. He wouldn’t be able to speak to me outright, but if he’s delivering a threat in ord
er to further Titania’s plans, it might let him get around the geas.”
“Seems pretty thin to me. You believe him?”
“Titania’s done it to him before. And she doesn’t really like me.”
“You kill someone’s daughter, that happens,” he said.
I shrugged wearily, tired to my bones. The combination of pain, cold, and multiple bursts of adrenaline had worn me down a lot more than I had realized. I couldn’t stop another yawn.
“What was he talking about as we pulled out?”
“Oh,” I mumbled. “After that mess at Arctis Tor, Lily gave me a silver pin in the shape of an oak leaf. It makes me an Esquire of Summer. Supposedly I can use it to whistle up help from Titania’s Court. It’s their way of balancing the scales for what we did.”
“Never a bad thing to be owed a favor,” Thomas agreed. “You got it on you?”
“Yeah,” I said. It was, in fact, in a little ring box within the inner coat of my duster. I got it out and showed it to Thomas.
He whistled. “Gorgeous work.”
“The Sidhe know pretty,” I agreed.
“Maybe you can use it and get them to back off.”
I snorted. “It’s never that simple. Titania could decide that the best way to help me would be to break my back, paralyze me from the waist down, and dump me into a hospital bed so her gruffs won’t have to kill me.”
Thomas grunted. “Then why would Fix mention it?”
“Maybe he was compelled to,” I said. “Maybe Titania’s hoping I’ll call for help and she’ll have a chance to squash me personally. Or maybe…”
I let my voice trail off for a moment, while I kicked my punch-drunk brain in the stomach until it threw up an idea.
“Or maybe,” I said, “because he wanted to warn me about it. The gruffs have found me twice now, and they haven’t been physically tailing or tracking me. Neither location was one of my regular hangouts. And how did Fix find me just now, in the middle of a blizzard? He sure as hell didn’t coincidentally pick a random IHOP.”
Thomas’s eyes widened in realization. “It’s a tracking device.”
I scowled at the beautiful little silver leaf and said, not without a certain amount of grudging admiration, “Titania. That conniving bitch.”
